Fact Check: ’A Fetus at 6 Weeks Has No More Brain Than a Grain of Rice’
The claim is misleading.
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A viral Facebook post claims that “A fetus at 6 weeks has no more brain than a grain of rice.” The post references the Texas heartbeat abortion law, which prohibits abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually at six weeks.
The first claim in the post—that a baby during the sixth week of gestation is the size of a grain of rice—is accurate. Gestational calendars use the beginning of a woman’s last cycle as a start date, but conception usually occurs two weeks later, meaning that at this point, the embryo has been developing for four weeks and is about an eighth of an inch long. Despite the small size, however, the embryo is already incredibly complex.
NARAL Pro-Choice America declined to comment on the matter, but recommended reaching out to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The ACOG’s lead for equity transformation, Dr. Jennifer Villavicencio, told The Dispatch Fact Check that “neural cells begin dividing during embryonic development, but the brain is a complex organ that takes an entire pregnancy to develop – and continues developing through infancy, childhood, and adolescence.” Prior to the sixth week of gestation, Villavicencio said “fetal brain development is in the form of microscopic neural cells dividing into the two types of cells that form the nervous system.”
In fact, by between four and six weeks, those cells have already completely formed a neural tube, the precursor to the brain and spinal cord. In an interview with The Dispatch Fact Check, Dr. Tara Sander Lee—a senior fellow and director of life sciences for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a pro-life organization—explained that once the neural tube closes “then the more specific regions and structures in the brain begin to form and fall into place—and that’s the forebrain, the midbrain, and the hindbrain.” At the end of week five, electric brain activity starts to occur as neurons begin to fire.
There is debate over what the moral takeaway of this information should be, with opposite sides of the debate differing over whether this formation of the early nervous system and brain activity deserves the moral status of “life.” But it is clear that comparing a fetus at six weeks to a grain of rice is warranted only when it comes to size; saying that after six weeks of gestation a fetus “has no more brain than a grain of rice” misleads about the amount of development that has occurred thus far.
The Other 98% did not respond to a request for comment.
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I think these battles about whether it “has a brain,” “heartbeat,” “clump of cells,” “human being,” and other linguistic gymnastics are all pointless and simply cloud the issue.
The fundamental question is: at what point does a fertilized egg become a [thing that should have the legal protections we normally ascribe to people]. In other words, when does “the magic happen” and therefore after that point the government should step in and protect it?
-Pro abortion folks: “it is a clump of cells, so the magic hasn’t happened yet”
-Anti abortion folks: “but the clump of cells meets the definition of a human being, so yes, the magic has happened.
-Anti abortion folks: “it has a heartbeat, so the magic must have happened”
-Pro abortion folks “yeah but that “heartbeat” is just electrical activity…the thing that is beating isn’t really even a functioning heart at that point… so the magic hasn’t happened yet.”
-Anti abortion folks: “it’s a baby, of course the magic has happened”
-Pro abortion folks: “beg the question much?”
…
I don’t know when the magic happens, but I do know that there are lots of folks (people I know and like and respect) with very strong, yet wildly different opinions of when it does. I totally get why many people believe the magic happens at conception, but I also get why others don’t.
My personal brand of political philosophy says that in the absence of reasonable consensus, the govt should stay out of the matter.
However, if you look at the point of viability, I don’t see any way to argue that by that point, the magic _hasn’t_ happened. The fetus at that point is capable of living independently (not that it doesn’t need someone still to take care of it, but that someone at that point can be anyone), so has to be considered an individual. If there’s a bright line that Americans can coalesce around, seems to me this is a good one, rather than there being a detectable heartbeat or whatever other developmental milestone.
"Even though the fetus is now developing areas that will become specific sections of the brain, not until the end of week 5 and into week 6 (usually around forty to forty-three days) does the first electrical brain activity begin to occur. This activity, however, is not coherent activity of the kind that underlies human consciousness, or even the coherent activity seen in a shrimp's nervous system. Just as neural activity is present in clinically brain-dead patients, early neural activity consists of unorganized neuron firing of a primitive kind. Neuronal activity by itself does not represent integrated behavior." 'The Ethical Brain' By Michael S. Gazzaniga via the New York Times
One might argue that this fact check is misleading as well. It certainly walks a vague line.
It was a post to remind people of how ridiculous the 6 week standard is. Conception is at about the two week mark, implantation about the 4 week (IF successful, many aren't at this point), and the neural tube closes usually by the end of 6 weeks.